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9 June 2016
Forecasts are getting Better, But The Public is Being Given Lousy Forecasts
Weather forecasts are much better than even a decade ago, and the change over the last 20 years has been remarkable, but in many cases, the weather forecast the average Joe gets has gotten worse. The good news is that it’s fairly easy to get the best forecast possible, but getting that message out will not be easy. Here is the problem: I’ve heard my fellow meteorologists call them “crap apps,” …
24 November 2014
The Governor of New York Owes an Apology to a Bunch of Meteorologists
The Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, really stepped in it on Saturday. He’s now getting a firestorm of criticism, and he deserves every bit of it, but I want you to understand why before I go into what he said. There is an old rule among weather forecasters, and it goes like this- “Never forecast a record, you will probably be wrong!”. Now I, and many others, have broken …
10 August 2014
How Weather and Climate Models Work- or Why Meteorologists Learn Calculus
Numerical weather models have come light years over the last 30 years, and despite what you may think, they make it possible to make very accurate weather forecasts for as much as 5-7 days into the future possible. Have you ever wondered just how they work? It’s not something that you can cover in a few paragraphs, but it is not all that hard to get a basic understanding of …
2 December 2013
I Stand Behind What I Said In September About Hurricane Forecasts
This from NOAA this week. The 2013 hurricane season ended at midnight Saturday night, and in spite of the forecasts for an active season, it was just the opposite. Nov. 25, 2013 NOAA Press Release The 2013 Atlantic hurricane season, which officially ends on Saturday, Nov. 30, had the fewest number of hurricanes since 1982, thanks in large part to persistent, unfavorable atmospheric conditions over the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean …
25 November 2013
Weather Forecasting and Social Media; Are We Doing It Wrong?
My friend Greg Fishel (the long time Chief meteorologist at WRDU in Raleigh, NC) brought up something the other day that’s really stuck in my mind. It’s actually been bugging me for awhile, and it has to do with posting raw model data on the internet (and showing it on air). You may not even realize you are seeing it, and that itself is part of the problem. It’s NOT …
Dan Satterfield has worked as an on air meteorologist for 32 years in Oklahoma, Florida and Alabama. Forecasting weather is Dan's job, but all of Earth Science is his passion. This journal is where Dan writes about things he has too little time for on air. Dan blogs about peer-reviewed Earth science for Junior High level audiences and up.